Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle

Book excerpt: Reissued in 1997 with corrections and a new Afterword, this book fully explores for the first time an idea common to Plato and Aristotle, which unites their treatments-- otherwise very different--of love and friendship. The idea is that although persons are separate, their lives need not be.One person's life may overflow into another's, and as such, helping another person is a way of serving oneself. The author shows how their view of love and friendship, within not only personal relationships, but also the household and even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomybetween egoism and altruism.